Air India Cancels 14 Flights As Stir By Pilots Continues

Air India on Monday cancelled 14 flights from the national capital as a section of the agitating executive pilots refused to accept the management's proposal to set up a committee to look into their grievances

PTI [ Updated: September 28, 2009 3:14 IST ]

air india cancels 14 flights as stir by pilots continues

Air India on Monday cancelled 14 flights from the national capital as a section of the agitating executive pilots refused to accept the management's proposal to set up a committee to look into their grievances and continued with their stir.

The airline cancelled 12 domestic flights to Bangalore, Varanasi, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Leh, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Tirupati besides two international ones to Bangkok and Kabul after the pilots of these flights did not report to work, an airlines' official said.

The national carrier operates over 50 flights from the national capital, but on Sunday they decided to run just 27 flights out which only 18 were operated.

In a bid to buy peace with its agitating executive pilots, Air India on Sunday night put on hold the cut in the pilots Productivity-Linked Incentives(PLI), which triggered the stir, and decided to form a seven-member committee to look into the modalities in the cut in the PLIs.

But representative of the agitating executive pilots, Captain V K Bhalla refused to accept the proposal, saying the management will first have to pay the due flying allowance and PLIs of three month to all pilots and withdraw the order of cut in their PLIs.

"If they pay us our dues, then a neutral platform for talks would be set up and then we will go for any talks," Bhalla told PTI.